Sam Gillibrand
'COUNTER MEMORY': A Screening of Godland
- DIRECTED BY Hlynur Pálmason
- Denmark/Iceland
- Danish/Icelandic (with subtitles)
- 2022
- 148 MINS
- 12A
- Sat 14th Sept // 18:00
- Hollybush Conservation Centre
At once suffocatingly bleak and transcendently beautiful, Hlynur Pálmason's Godland sees Lucas, a Danish Lutheran priest, and amateur photographer, arrive in Iceland after begging his superiors to assign him to oversee the construction of a church in a remote settlement.
Almost immediately, however, Lucas's initial hubris rapidly gives way to mounting despair; forced to travel across Iceland on horseback, Lucas is soon met with hostility by not only his native Icelander guide Ragnar, but also the landscape itself. Traveling through towering mountain passes, across glaciers bathed in the glow of volcanic eruptions, and down to marshes echoing with the squelches of copulating eels, Lucas's faith and sanity are rapidly corroded as he is forced to confront the endless struggle between nature and man, the finite and the immortal, and the earthly and the divine.
Almost immediately, however, Lucas's initial hubris rapidly gives way to mounting despair; forced to travel across Iceland on horseback, Lucas is soon met with hostility by not only his native Icelander guide Ragnar, but also the landscape itself. Traveling through towering mountain passes, across glaciers bathed in the glow of volcanic eruptions, and down to marshes echoing with the squelches of copulating eels, Lucas's faith and sanity are rapidly corroded as he is forced to confront the endless struggle between nature and man, the finite and the immortal, and the earthly and the divine.